Environmental Apocalypse 2019?

This year’s environmental news kicked off in grisly fashion: a Vietnamese poaching gang recording one of its members straddling and punching a snared and presumably dead tiger (the Thai authorities say they have caught the perpetrators) in one of Thailand’s protected areas.

Thailand has always seemed, to those in the conservation world, Southeast Asia’s last great hope for wild tigers and wildlife in general, which makes the news of a Vietnamese poaching gang active and beating on a dead tiger all the more distressing. But things can change fast. Nothing is really protected, nothing actually sacrosanct in the natural world, and this is especially true in Southeast Asia, where the bad news piles up fast — not even two months into 2019.

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